The house I grew up in is gone.

My grandfather was born in a small farmhouse in Sheffield, Massachusetts, in 1913. Sixty-three years later, my parents brought me home from the hospital to the same house. My grandfather retired to Ft. Myers, Florida, but left a small camper that he and my grandmother stayed in when they visited. Grandpa was a small man, but he lit up a room with his smile. He didn’t hand out approval easily, but when he did it hit like a wave. He was wiry and weathered the way you imagine old New Englanders; Robert Frost and E. E. Cummings, rugged and righteous, wise and wise-ass. I looked forward to those visits every summer. When Grandpa was there, we never watched TV. We worked hard outside all day; he always looked the place up and down when he arrived, sighed with his whole body, then went into the garage and got his old tools and got to work. I followed him around, learning things about plants that my father either didn’t know or didn’t care to teach me. We stayed up late and drank lemonade and played dice and caught fireflies. My sister told me that while she was dating her husband, she pointed at my grandfather and said, “Watch that man. He’ll teach you everything you need to know.” I could have told him that.

The house sat at the base of Mount Everett, and that mountain was my playground. My brothers were older and knew more of it than I did, but I spent my childhood climbing giant rocks and trees and swimming in a winding brook in my very own Terabithia. Years later, I proposed to my wife on that mountain. It wasn’t elaborate. It probably didn’t give her much of a story. But I couldn’t think of a better place to ask someone to spend the rest of her life with me than the magical kingdom where I’d faced and overcome so many dangers. I knocked myself unconscious one winter sledding head first down the narrow trail where the woods met the mountain. I remember seeing my friends running away before things went black; I assume they came back, possibly with an adult.

Sleepovers at my house meant sleeping bags in the barn, late-night games of flashlight tag in the corn field, and even later-night terrified sprints to the house to sleep on the dining room floor. One summer my friends and I found dirty magazines in the hay loft. It was very exciting and dramatic. After what seemed like an eternity but was probably a couple months of tantalizing guilt and pre-adolescent confusion, we nobly set them out in the rain. It’s easy to roll my eyes now, but in that moment we were purified.

We fed our wood stove all winter to heat the house, and that meant splitting firewood during the fall to stock the shed. We’d set the splitter up across the street and fill pickup truck after pickup truck in the crisp fall air, and while I’m sure I complained plenty, I never felt closer to my family. My brothers and sisters were teenagers and at least nine years older, but on those weekends we were together, doing honest work and banking our survival. Getting up first on a New England February morning and starting the fire with wood from the back of the shed – that was love.

I left for college in 1994. I came back during breaks, and much as I wanted to play the “college guy” part, nothing felt better than curling up under my old blanket on my bed next to the chimney. I sat in my room during winter breaks and wrote terrible poetry and felt very Thomas Pynchon, but I had seen Paris (Ohio), so how were they gonna keep me down on the farm? I came home on breaks less and less as college went on, and finally I graduated and rented an apartment just outside Dayton. I was a Midwesterner.

My mother died in 2005, 10 years after my grandfather. My father sold the house while she was in the hospital. My father, the self-appointed minister, the arbiter of all things holy, the man who taught me that the road to God was narrow and ran right through his backyard, unmade my connection to family, to history, to beautiful dreams and knuckle-scraping reality. The house that passed from generation to generation didn’t make it to mine.

I haven’t spoken to him since.

I hear the house looks lovely these days. The barn fell down before my mother died, and the old garage and driveway are gone. I hear there’s a nice circular drive. I don’t know if the new owner tore it down and rebuilt or just remodeled the old house. I don’t know which I’d prefer. I’ve said for years that I don’t care who owns it as long as it’s loved. I’m such a liar.

I won’t belabor the metaphor. I have some things to set out in the rain.

I have Ruffles and Coke. With ice. Mom would get it.

The talking heads on the news keep telling me that this is the fifth anniversary of Katrina, but to me, they’re burying the lead. Katrina was background noise five years ago. The real story was in the bed in the hospital room where my mother lay dying.

My mother was a tiny woman with hidden strength. And I’m not talking about that wispy emotional strength everyone attributes to their mothers. She had that, too, but Mom was just plain tough. She had polio and spent years of her childhood at the roller rink, crying her way through lap after lap as she stretched her Achilles’ tendons. She had metal rods in her legs, but she never used a cane; hardly even limped. Barely out of her teens, she lost all her teeth in a car accident when her mouth collided with the steering wheel. She chewed peanuts with her gums to toughen them up for the dentures she would wear the rest of her life. Five sons who towered over her not-quite-five-foot frame each foolishly tested her will at some point in our teens; I don’t think any of us did it twice.

So when I walked into her hospital room five years ago and saw her lying there connected to tubes and wires, I was shaken to see her looking so frail. The cancer we thought they had cut out of her uterus had made its way to her lungs, and then to her brain. She smiled weakly and mumbled something at me; everyone else in the room acted like she had jumped up and hugged me. Once I got over the initial shock, I settled in with my brother and sisters for the long wait. A table with a few chairs stood in the corner, and my sister had piled it high with snacks, including Mom’s cure for everything from the common cold to a broken heart, Ruffles and Coke. With ice. The only thing missing from Mom’s “Had a Bad Day, Kid?” sampler platter was a jigsaw puzzle, and I think we’d have set one up if there had been room.

The long night became a long day, which became another long night and longer day, and eventually somebody cracked and turned on the TV. Hurricane Katrina. It just didn’t sink in. We were busy watching every single ragged breath Mom took. Those breaths got more and more ragged, and one evening my sister, a nurse who knows a thing or three about this sort of thing, called us around Mom’s bed. We cried and prayed and sang and hugged her and did all the things you do when it’s time. We waited for her last breath to come. And waited. And waited.

She just kept taking them. Because Mom was just plain tough, her body didn’t get the hint that she was about to die. I think my sister felt a little foolish for telling us it was time, but I think she was right. Mom was different after that night. Her doctor told us that her body might take days or weeks to catch up to … he didn’t say soul. I filled that in myself. So I went back to Chicago. Early the next week, I got the call.

Mom died August 30, 2005. She was the strongest person I have ever known, and while I’ve come to recognize her failings more and more in the years since she died, I am proud to be her son. She never quit giving. She loved unconditionally. And she was damn near unsinkable. Sometimes I worry I don’t live up to the example she set. Well, ok, every minute of every day I am absolutely convinced that I don’t live up to the example she set. But I can try again today.

After Ruffles and a Coke. With ice. Mom, I hope one day I get it.

In 1996, I couldn’t have written this.

Well, sure, I could have gone to the computer lab. But in my room? Nope. Not on a keyboard. I didn’t own a computer.

It sounds insane now. I’m not sure I believe it myself. But I just didn’t need one. Then my roommate took a year off to pay his student loans down (insanity, I was sure at the time – ah, hindsight), and when he returned, he was packing a high tech, state of the art, bad ass Pentium. Thing cost him three grand, easy, but it was worth it. I bet it had 12 MB of RAM. We were living off campus, far from the loving embrace of the computer lab, so I just had to get me one of what he had. So I dragged my girlfriend (now my ever patient wife) off to Best Buy and I got me a computerator.

It’s all been downhill from there.

Backing up slightly. The summer before my roommate came back from his factory exile, I lived in a dump with a bunch of idiots I hated. I owned a guitar and a notebook and enough clothes to get me through a week. I spent my free time at a used bookstore I found about 20 minutes away with a killer musty basement full of old science fiction. I snagged copies of The Hugo Winners, Dangerous Visions, Again, Dangerous Visions – brain warping stuff, and all kinds of awesome. I read those books, I played my guitar, and I wrote stories in my notebook. That, as I understood it, was the good life.

The summer after college, I got a factory job unloading trucks for a furniture store. Naturally, when the local comic book store put a Help Wanted sign in the window, I jumped at it. It was there that I learned the unending joys of Magic: the Gathering, a brilliant little game that conspired with my employee discount to own my very soul. That summer, I wrote a lot less in my notebook, and I played a lot less guitar.

Around 2000, the group of fun-loving nerds I played Magic with discovered EverQuest. Since I owned a computer, I was in like Flynn. Though I did hold out for a while. I even got some free cards from my friend who was too busy playing EverQuest on the store computer to ring me up. His dismissive hand wave was my tournament sideboard. But eventually, I rolled up an Erudite Wizard and the rest, as someone probably said once, is history. I didn’t know where my notebook was, and I’m pretty sure my guitar had a couple broken strings.

In 2001, my daughter was born. I sold off my Magic collection to buy diapers and formula, but my EverQuest addiction lingered. After all, I needed that computer for theoretically useful things that I never actually used it for, and since it was there, who was I not to kite wyverns in Cobalt Scar? I didn’t give up EverQuest for another year, but I’ve been over all that.

Here’s my point. I swear.

October was National Get Rid of Useless Crap Month. I like doing that. I make scapegoats out of innocent clutter because it’s easier than dealing with the real issue. I find causes to champion that don’t get at the heart of what’s important to me. I fight other people’s battles. So, here’s hoping, I’m taking one last swing at the right target.

The Internet owns my ass.

I’m going back to my notebook. I’m going back to my guitar. Obviously, I’m not going to cut off my digital nose to spite my face. There are too many useful things online, and too many relationships I can’t maintain any other way. But this place is getting to me. I’m getting the Fear. And 99% of the Internet is waving a razor-sharp hunting knife in my eye.

National Get Rid of Useless Crap Month wasn’t all desperate casting about for something to blame. I’m happy I cut out cable last month, since watching TV keeps me from my notebook. I’m happy I gave up meat for the past two months, since that taught me some valuable lessons and some delicious recipes. I’m not giving up meat for good, though. That’s not my fight.

My fight is with words. My fight is with Willa Cather’s words, and William Faulkner’s words, and Ernest Hemingway’s words, and E.E. Cummings’ words, and T.S. Eliot’s words, and, forgive my damnable arrogance, my words. In the long long ago – in the before time – my idea of a perfect day was a long walk in the snow followed by a double date with Michael Stipe and Sherwood Anderson. Cool? Hell no. Better than Facebook? For me.

National Get Rid of Useless Crap Month continues, and it just keeps getting better. You know that part of your brain that thinks you’re a hypocrite and judges every bad decision you make? Yes, you do. Here’s what I’ve learned this month: if you don’t want to end up doing some major life remodeling, do not let that prick drive.

First, an update on the No Food With Faces plan. Aside from the occasional and predictable “I want this because I can’t have it” impulse, it’s been pretty easy. The trick is learning a new menu. For the last few months, my wife has cooked vegetarian when she’s been home in the evenings, and when she’s been at work, I’ve cooked meatetarian. So now I have to learn her recipes and find a few more to fill out the week. A cool side effect is I’m way more disciplined about packing a lunch, since fast food options are incredibly limited. Though, in a pinch, Subway’s Pile All Our Vegetables on a Roll -wich is pretty damn tasty.

Now to new business. This week’s Useless Crap is cable TV. I’ve been trying to beat this boss for nearly a year (well, much longer than that, but in its current form, let’s call it a year). Last Christmas, we realized we used (or could use) Netflix, Hulu, or iTunes for all our planned viewing, and watching more TV than that was just wasting valuable time. So I called Comcast and walked away with a lower bill, free HBO, and a spinning head. About three months ago I tried again, but I wasn’t prepared for the defense; they convinced me it would cost more to drop TV and pay for the other two services than to just keep all three.

This time, though, I was prepared. After all, it’s Get Rid of Useless Crap Month. I researched their prices. I studied my bill. I was ready. Instead of telling them I wanted to drop TV, I canceled everything right up front, then added a new phone plan and a new Internet plan. Worked like a charm. They didn’t question a thing, just happily processed my order. Despite Comcast’s warnings, my bill won’t go up. In fact, it’s going to be cut in half. The only show I regularly watch that isn’t available free somewhere is Mad Men, and $2 an episode from iTunes or Amazon is a better deal than I was getting from Comcast. Most importantly, Useless Crap of zombying in front of my favorite episode of Whatever-the-hell-is-on-right-this-second has been eliminated.

Next? That pile of DVDs I never watch. That judgy little bastard is a prick.

Billy Graham is the only reason I still eat meat.

OK. Fine. I’ll explain.

Next month is National Novel Writing Month (feel free to add me as a Writing Buddy). I’ve taken a few stabs atthis, and I’ve had moderate success with it. I’ve never won, but I’ve taken away valuable lessons from the attempt each time. Usually, my failure stems from a lack of planning (not a fact unique to NaNoWriMo, it should be noted). To remedy this, I have declared October National Get Rid of Useless Crap in My Life Month. Some things are simple (I really didn’t need that Facebook farm anyway). Some things are harder (how much TV do I really need to watch?). And some things are so deeply rooted, I didn’t even know they were there.

My wife has been interested in vegetarian cooking for a long time. She has a bunch of Sarah Kramer’s cookbooks, and despite my initial reluctance, I have loved everything we’ve cooked from them. (Oh, and FTC – no, she didn’t pay me anything to say that.) Over the past five years or so, our meat consumption has dwindled to pretty much chicken. A few months ago, hers dwindled even further to nothing. Not mine, though. I eat meat. Not out of any particular love of eating meat, but because to not eat meat is to become someone who does not eat meat. And those people are just plain jerks.

OK. Fine. I’ll explain further.

I grew up Baptist. Oh, my parents didn’t call themselves Baptists, but I’ve met Baptists since, and we were Baptists. One night when I was six, I saw a red-faced Billy Graham on TV saying that if I didn’t believe in Jesus, I was going to hell. Hell sounded like a place that would suck, so I asked my parents how to avoid this. They were only too happy to explain, and from that moment on, as far as they were concerned, I was on the list. But we weren’t just Baptists. We were Evangelicals. That means we were the “Go ye into all the world and cram your beliefs down the throats of anything with a pulse” types. What I believe, I learned by constant example, is way more important than what anyone else believes, and it is my obligation to fix them. I get angry when I see someone shoving a picture of an aborted fetus in a woman’s face because I’ve held that sign. I’ve preached at homeless people who just wanted some food. I spent so long being evangelical that once the penny dropped and I realized how absolutely rude my behavior was, I never wanted to act that way again about anything.

And that’s why I didn’t want to be vegetarian. But the more I thought about what I was eating, the more I realized that it was no longer about justifying a decision to stop eating meat. It was about justifying continuing to eat meat. And I just didn’t have a good reason. So I decided to stop. But because of the way I was raised, I can’t shake a sense that by announcing a lifestyle decision, I’m announcing my expectations for the class. But if I don’t announce it, I’m hiding something and giving myself an excuse to back off my convictions.

I don’t eat meat. I’m left handed. I love the Red Sox. I believe there’s a God, and I have found a tradition that suits me pretty well in hashing out what that means. My saying that doesn’t invalidate your turkey sandwich, or your spiral notebooks, or your Yankees hat, or your skepticism. But not saying it threatens to undermine my own experience, and that makes it Useless Crap I need to Get Rid of.

This might be a long month.

Back in 2001, technically, I lived in Ohio, but I spent most of my time in Norrath. It’s been nearly six years since I’ve gone anywhere near it, but for about two years, you couldn’t drag me away from EverQuest. I played a wizard, and I was bad ass. Fireballs, ice comets, teleportation, levitation — you name it, I could do it. I stopped playing shortly after my daughter was born, partly — ok, mainly — because it was threatening to wreck my marriage. See, here’s the thing about Norrath. While Ohio was lovely, it couldn’t really compete in the “wandering creatures to destroy with super powers” department. The most exciting adventure Ohio offered me on a Saturday morning was mowing the lawn. Given the choice, I’d much rather head to Lower Guk and fry a few undead frogs.

Around 2003, I handed over my account to a friend to play. This was harder than I had imagined it would be (see how hard — make a list of everything you’ve done for two years, including all the friends you’ve made and stuff you’ve bought. Now give those friends and that stuff to a friend. Walk away whistling.), but it was important for me to move beyond the game and pay attention to my actual life. While I hadn’t played for about a year at that point, I still had the ocassional itch, and all I had to do to scratch it was load the game back up and pay for a month — voila, instant crack pipe. Giving the whole account away took that option away. And it worked. I honestly hadn’t thought about the game at all for about four years.

Until Monday. Monday I read that, in an effort to suck back the poor fools who had escaped, EverQuest was offering a free download of the game and free gameplay for two months to anyone with an inactive account. Somehow, I remembered my passwords and looked at the account history. Turns out my friend hadn’t changed the password after all, and he hadn’t played since around 2005. I got a little itchy. I downloaded the game. I waited patiently as it patched and updated. Finally, I logged in. There was my wizard, bad ass as ever. I found myself in a zone that hadn’t existed when I played, and I noticed quickly that my friend had changed my wizard’s last name from Stormbringer to Flameydeath. Of course, I was offended by this, so I changed it back. That problem solved, being the master of teleportation that I was, I popped myself into Greater Faydark, home of the elves. I spent hours once upon a time staring at the wizard spires that jutted up from the middle of that forest, and I caught myself getting nostalgic. I hung around a while, feeling my fingers remember exactly how to check my menus, open my spellbook, sit, stand, run . . . it was like riding a bicycle, if bicycles could hover and came with giant, magic-powered cannons. My wife was indulgent. She smiled when I shouted at familiar things, or when I remembered what some spell or other did, or when I turned a passing fairy into a smoldering pile of wings (actually, I think she genuinely enjoyed that), but I could see the pain behind it. This game had been a major battleground in our marriage, and while it wasn’t to blame for our problems, it was where I went to get away from them, and from her.

Lots of the specs have been updated on EverQuest since I last played it, and while my computer has been, too, there are always little quirks you need to work around when you load up a game that wants lots of resources. So whenever I changed zones, the game crashed. It was a minor annoyance, and I put up with it long enough to take a tour of my favorite places, but it wouldn’t do to play that way for a month. So I uninstalled EverQuest about two hours after I logged back on. My wizard is sleeping again, probably never to fry another frog or fairy, and that’s fine. But I can’t help admitting a little sadness at leaving Norrath again, even after such a short return. Familiarity probably fuels all sorts of addictions — when my computer crashed during zone changes, I felt that same little tug that I remember feeling day after day, hour after hour, six years ago, and I wasn’t strong enough to walk away back then until it was almost too late. Maybe I’ve grown up, or maybe technology conspired to make me seem as if I have, but I’ll take whatever little victories I can get. When I was done wandering down memory-pixelated lane, I went into the living room. My daughter had painted me a very pretty picture, and my wife had made dinner.

Fuck Norrath.